That Left Behind
by LiveLaughLove728
Summary: Ginny and Ron take a trip to Privet Drive to get all of Harry's belongings left behind during his horcrux hunt.


**Hey guys!**

 **So, ever since I wrote The Muggles, I've had this idea in my head where Ginny goes to Privet Drive to get the things Harry left there in DH, because even though I understood, it really bothered me that he left all that stuff behind with no intention of going back for it. It sort of became one of those ideas that wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote it, so this was the result. It's sort of a sequel to The Muggles, but it's not vital that you read that first. Enjoy!**

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The sound of Apparition broke the peaceful quiet in the town of Little Winging, depositing Ron and Ginny Weasley in the alleyway dividing Magnolia Crescent and Wisteria Walk—the same alleyway, coincidentally, in which, a few years previously, Harry Potter had saved his cousin from Dementors and where, prior to that, he had seen the Animagus form of Sirius Black for the first time. To any nearby Muggles, the sound of their arrival would be chalked up to that of a car backfiring, or perhaps as the result of the nefarious antics of some troublesome neighborhood boys, though such types were an extreme rarity in this part of Surrey.

Ron, after a quick glance around, looked at Ginny, who, despite herself, was smiling a smug smile. She had, after all, only passed her Apparition test a few weeks ago, and this was the first outing she had been on which had required the magical transportation. To say that arriving here by means completely her own was satisfying would be an understatement. Ron shook his head at her expression. "I don't get it," he said, "When I first started Apparating, I could barely stay on my feet after, I was so dizzy. And yet you, a total beginner, seem perfectly alright."

He sounded slightly grudging and Ginny's grin widened. She shrugged, unconcerned. "I'm just that good, I guess." It was true she'd never really had much of an issue with the act of Apparation. Compared to some of her classmates, she'd actually taken to it rather quickly. Frankly, it was a wonder they'd gotten the chance to learn at all, given the events of the past school year, but she was very grateful.

"That big-headed, more like," Ron replied, unruffled.

"Whatever," Ginny huffed, "Which way?"

Ron glanced between either end of the alleyway. "That way,' he declared, pointing toward the one leading out onto Wisteria Walk, "I think."

"You _think_?" Ginny questioned, even as she fell into step beside Ron as he began walking in the direction he'd indicated, "You've been there before. You said you knew where it was."

"I do," Ron replied, "I've just never actually gotten there from the street before." They walked for a moment in silence until the road sign baring the words, _Privet Drive,_ came into view, at which he looked at Ginny smugly. She rolled her eyes easily.

There was just under a week left before Ginny would be departing for Hogwarts to finish out her seventh year of school with Hermione while Ron and Harry started Auror training, and she had been determined, for some time now, to complete this errand before that happened. Her resolve to do so had only increased with all she had learned from Harry about his time spent at Privet Drive, and with him having received word that his Muggle family would be returning home in just two days, the time to do so without causing a fuss with them—though a rather large part of her longed to do just that—had nearly run out.

Shortly after Ginny's world had turned right side up again after the Battle of Hogwarts and its aftermath, it had been brought to her attention, via passing comment from Harry, that the vast majority of his belongings had been left in his old bedroom in Surrey when he'd departed from the place to begin his search for horcruxes the previous July, and that he had no real intention of ever returning for any of it. At the time, that information had come as something of a shock to Ginny, who'd refused to believe he was okay with living off of the few things he'd managed to hold onto during his time on the hunt. Even if he did buy all new things, some things simply could not be replaced. Knowing what she knew now, however, she did not blame him in the slightest.

Still, there were surely some things still in the Dursleys' house that Harry would have liked to hold on to, even if he didn't think he did, and Ginny had taken it upon herself to get those things and bring them to the Burrow for him. She'd asked Ron, who'd been more than willing, to assist her, as she had never been to Harry's Muggle home before and because she, no matter how close she was to Harry, was still a girl and felt it would be helpful to have someone of the male species along with her to help decide what should be brought back and what could stay to be left to the Muggles to do with as they pleased.

Harry did not know they were doing this and that was how Ginny preferred it until the errand was over and done. As far as she was concerned, the less thought he had to spare for the place he'd grown up, the better. Not to mention, after everything he had done for her, as well as her whole family, after Fred's death, this was really the least she and Ron could do.

Number 4 Privet Drive, from the outside, appeared completely unharmed. The grass was maintained, if not slightly in need of mowing, and the flowerbeds, though the flowers had been allowed to grow slightly wild, were free of weeds and flourishing. All in all, everything seemed as if nothing at all had happened to the house, though Ginny knew otherwise. She did, however, suspect, based on the little information Harry had given her about his aunt in the past, that the yard and garden, though both looked perfect to her, were far below the standards to which Petunia Dursley usually kept them.

The Muggles, as it turned out, had been right to go into hiding for the year. Death Eaters had come by on more than one occasion and destroyed the place searching for Harry. It had all been magically put to rights since, the all clear having been given the day before. Restoring the non-magical house had, apparently, been a simple matter of, after Aurors cleared it of any dark magic and traps, about ten minutes and some spells of medium difficulty that had posed no real problem at all. Realistically, the Dursleys could have moved back mere days after the battle without the efforts of restoring the place taking any real toll on the Ministry's post-war efforts, but with all the rebuilding and necessary politics that had taken place over the past quarter-year, the simple matter of fixing up a Muggle home had been of extremely low priority—even Muggles who happened to be related to The Boy Who Lived.

As they made their way up the front path of the unremarkable house, Ginny noticed the curtains twitching in the window of the house directly across from Number 4 and shook her head. She remembered Harry briefly mentioning the nosy neighbors back during their time spent together as a couple during her fifth year. He hadn't been exaggerating, it seemed.

"I've never actually gone in the front door," Ron mused as they mounted the single step leading to said door. It was locked, but he, after a quick look at Ginny who nodded, made short work of it with _Alohomora._ He turned the knob and the door swung open, with barely a creak, to revel the front landing of the house, which, like its exterior, betrayed no hint of the shambles it had apparently so recently been in.

"So, upstairs, right?" Ginny asked Ron, already moving in the direction of the stairs.

"Yeah," he answered, trailing after her, "Second door on the right, I think. Or, at least, the second window on that side."

"Helpful," Ginny replied, only half mocking.

"Well, you know, I try."

Ron, as it turned out, was correct about Harry's being the second door on the right. The door, whether it had been Harry or someone else who had left it that way, was unlocked. Ginny opened it to reveal a tiny, remarkably bare room consisting of a single bed, a beat up desk, and a small chest of drawers. Scattered around the room were his old school books, clothes, and a few other belongings, though of those there were surprisingly few, even with the circumstances. Looking around, it was obvious Harry had taken with him only what was absolutely essential to his mission.

The walls of the room were white and mostly bare except for a small Gryffindor banner, which Harry had pinned up above his bed. Ginny could imagine him, lying awake during the summer months spent trapped at Privet Drive, staring up at the banner, a reminder of the fact that the magical world that provided an escape from his horrible Muggle life was more than just a happy dream.

Beside her, Ron stared around the room without a word. Ginny wondered if he'd ever gotten a chance to actually look at it before. She had not shared with him any of the information she'd gleaned from Harry during their conversation about his relatives. She hadn't told anyone. He had shared that information with her in confidence and it was not her place to disclose it. Besides, she kind of liked the fact that she was the only one who really knew about that aspect of Harry's life, after everything she'd been left in the dark about in the past.

"Well," Ron said finally, "I guess we should get to work, then." Ginny, rather than respond, just walked farther into the room, toward the desk where Harry's old books were stacked. Ron, following her lead, moved toward the bed where various clothes were strewn, the majority of them school robes and uniforms, though there were some Muggle things mixed sparsely in.

Harry, it seemed, had kept every schoolbook he'd ever gotten during his six years at Hogwarts. Many of them looked well used, though a few, like _A History of Magic,_ seemed nearly brand new.

"I think whoever repaired the place tidied up a bit," Ron intoned as he sorted. Ginny glanced back at him, away from the textbooks she'd been methodically shrinking to a manageable size and stuffing in the bag she'd brought, in time to see him hold up a big T-shirt, fraying at the edges and easily four sizes too large for Harry, and make a face before tossing it to the side with the obvious designation of rubbish. Maybe Harry had the right idea in planning to buy all new things.

"Why do you say that?" she asked her brother.

"Because this place is too neat to be Harry's doing," Ron replied.

Ginny glanced critically around again. The room wasn't overly neat, though she wasn't herself either. The desk was cluttered with books and old school things, the bed half-buried in piled clothes. It lacked any significant dust, but given that the whole place was newly overhauled, that wasn't a huge shock. "How do you know?"

"Because I shared a room with him for most of the past seven years," Ron told her simply, "And believe me, Harry is not this clean. No rubbish on the floor, or broken quills and Quidditch gear strewn about." He looked around once more. "Also, I'm pretty sure he said once that the Muggles kept a bunch of his cousin's old broken toys and electronics piled up in here, and there's none of that now." Ginny shook her head, but was unsurprised at that information. She thought it might be hard for her to be any more appalled at the Dursleys' treatment of Harry than she already was. "Maybe the cleanup crew decided to save the hero of the Wizarding World the trouble of having to tidy up himself?" Ron added, "I suppose that makes our job easier, at any rate,"

It didn't take very long for them to clear the room of all worthwhile belongings of Harry's, which meant that ten minutes later, Ginny's bag was loaded down with his magically shrunken Hogwarts textbooks, cauldron, parchment, unbroken quills, Quidditch gear, wizard's robes that still looked likely to fit, and a few Muggle articles that had made the cut, though he would definitely still need to go shopping if he hoped to stay adequately clothed for more than four days.

Ron, upon discovering an extra set of moderately well worn trainers under the bed, performed the shrinking charm and added them to the bag as well, and then, with one last glance around the now emptied room, deemed them ready to go. Ginny cast a look around herself and, having almost forgotten about it, retrieved the Gryffindor banner from the wall and added that to the bag as well. "Okay," she said aloud, though Ron had already left the room and tromped back down the stairs, "Now we can go."

She found Ron again downstairs in the living room, examining the photos that lined the mantelpiece. Dropping the bag with Harry's belongings in the doorway, she crossed the room and came to stand beside him. The frames lining the mantle were mostly of Harry's cousin, though a few contained other family members. Harry was not in a single one. "Blimey, that guy is massive," Ron intoned, sounding rather amazed as he stared at one of the framed photos of Harry's blonde, extremely large relative. Ginny hummed in agreement with a rather judgmental inflection. "No wonder Harry was always skin and bones," he continued, "That bloke probably ate all the food before he could get any."

You have no idea, thought Ginny. Ron looked at her. "Ready to go, then?" She nodded and followed Ron out of the living room, picking up the dropped bag on the way. She stopped in the hall though, midway to the exit, when she noticed the small door at the other end of the entrance hall that could lead nowhere but to the cupboard under the stairs, and a slightly morbid curiosity took hold. Ron, unaware of her sudden halt, continued toward the front door and only looked back after he had reached it and was ready to walk outside. "Oi," he called to Ginny's back as she approached the cupboard door rather slowly, "What are you doing?"

Ginny's only reply was to reach out and grasp the doorknob, which contained a rather impressive locking mechanism for a cupboard door, and turned it. The inside was no bigger than the cupboard under the stairs at home in the Burrow, which was to say very small indeed. The tiny bed that had clearly once been Harry's occupied the majority of the space and, judging from the layer of dust that covered everything inside, it was safe to assume that this space was one of the few in the house that had survived the Death Eater's raids unscathed—they probably hadn't known what to make of it themselves, and also that none of the Dursleys had bothered to come inside the tiny cupboard in quite some time—probably for fear that Harry's magic would contaminate them, Ginny thought scathingly.

"Gin," Ron said rather exasperatedly, moving impatiently toward her, "What—" He broke off at the makeshift and wholly inadequate bedroom that was the cupboard under the stairs at Privet Drive. "What on earth?"

Ginny, continuing to ignore her brother, stepped inside the small space, hunching over slightly to avoid hitting her head on the low ceiling, and looked around. Ron remained where he was in the hall, either because he, being much taller than Ginny, stood little chance of fitting, or because of the great number of spider webs that had taken up residence in the vacated cupboard, which, knowing Ron, was more likely. Other than the stripped bed, the space was mostly bare, save for a few broken bits of small toys, a few tiny models of Muggle soldiers, and a handful of scribbled drawings that sat scattered on the lowest shelf. Ginny examined them and was suddenly overcome with heartbreak for the young, orphaned Harry Potter who, even as a little kid, had been put through so much more than was fair. When she found a drawing of a little dark-haired figure holding hands with two taller figures, one with long hair, one with short, and both bearing angel's wings and halos, she was forced to either put it down and turn her attention elsewhere, or break down crying. She stepped away, almost stumbling on the small bed behind her, and caught a glimpse of Ron, who had watched the scene play out before him and was staring around the tiny space once more, looking more appalled now than bewildered. His blue eyes met hers momentarily. "Blimey," he said softly, "You don't think… Harry…" Ginny only nodded, not trusting herself to speak just then, even if she did decide to tell him more. Ron seemed to pale slightly and shook his head. "Bloody hell."

Ginny thought that summed up the situation pretty accurately. She took a deep breath and, as she exhaled, breathed, "Yeah." She stayed where she was for another few seconds before, in a spur of the moment decision born out of anger and impulse, she picked up the colored picture of little Harry with the parents he did not remember, and joined Ron in the hallway once more, shutting the door on the cupboard that had been the only space grudgingly allocated to The Boy Who Lived for nearly ten years. With barely a glance at her brother, she continued forward, into the kitchen, and placed the drawing in the middle of the spotless table, where it would be impossible for Harry's relatives to miss when they returned home. She would make them remember what they had put him through, whether they cared or not.

Harry didn't want her to go out of her way to confront the Durseys about what they'd done to him, but he'd said nothing about a passive aggressive reminder if she was already there. And anyway, he was a much better person than she was. She would never have let them get away with their actions so easily. This, she felt, was a nice compromise.

"Okay," she said, turning back to look at Ron, who had followed her as far as the kitchen doorway and stood watching her with a somewhat awed expression on his face, "We can go now." He nodded, understanding and, Ginny was almost certain, approving.

Back on the front steps of Number 4 Privet Drive, Ginny, after ensuring that no one was around, discretely raised her wand to the knob of the closed door and murmured, " _Colloportus,"_ locking it behind them.

They had left Privet Drive and were partway down Wisteria Walk before Ron spoke. "Did you know?" he asked.

"Yeah," Ginny answered.

"For how long?"

"Not long," she said.

"Is that why you wanted to come here?"

"No. Yes… Yes and no. I mean finding out only made me want to do this even more." He didn't say anything right away, just stared straight ahead. "Are you alright?" she asked quietly.

He nodded. "He's my best mate, is all."

"It's not for anything to do with you that he didn't tell you," Ginny told him gently.

"He told you." Ron replied.

"I'm different."

"I know." His tone wasn't begrudging. He seemed almost okay with that insight, and Ginny couldn't help wondering if his relationship with Hermione was changing his way of thinking for the better. He seemed hesitant to ask the next question. "Is— Is there more? That he told you? About…" He gestured vaguely in the direction of Privet Drive behind them.

"Yes," she told him softly. "It… Well, it wasn't good there for him. Not at all."

"That much is obvious, even without seeing it in person." They had slowed to a stop by this point and stood together on the sidewalk, drawing a few stares from passerby and being careful to keep their voices low to avoid being overheard. After a pause, Ron continued, "It doesn't take a genius to know those people were rather terrible to him. I mean Harry drops enough hints without even realizing it, I think. But he doesn't have to go there anymore. He doesn't have to go back ever _again_. He's part of our family now and I think—no, forget that—I _know_ that matters more to him than any of the things that happened there."

Ginny wasn't quite sure whether he was trying to reassure her or himself, but she agreed with his reasoning all the same. "You're right," she told him, "Things are better now. For all of us, but Harry especially."

Ron nodded and then glanced down the street toward the alleyway up ahead where they would Apparate back to the Burrow. "Should we go home?" he asked.

"Yeah," Ginny said, falling into step beside him once more.

"So, do you think he'll be okay with us coming to get his things for him?"

"I hope so," Ginny replied, "I mean if it was me, I'd want at least some of that stuff back, all the Quidditch gear and potion ingredients and all that, and I think he does to an extent too, just not enough to come back and get it all himself. So, I think so. I… I hope so."

"Well," Ron said rather nonchalantly, "If he isn't okay with it, he'll likely pitch a fit, you'll calm him down, and we can throw all his stuff away, let him buy all new things, and pretend none of it ever happened."

Ginny smiled as they reached the alleyway into which they'd Apparated earlier. "Sounds like a plan," she said.

It was comforting to realize things were different for Harry now. Ginny cared for him so much and it was painful to know just how much he'd been forced to endure in his life up to this point. But he wasn't alone anymore. He had her, and Ron and Hermione, and her mum and dad—her whole family really, and, like Ron had said, he never had to return to Privet Drive again. Things would be different for him from now on. Ginny would make sure of it. They all would, really. Harry would never be on his own again. And it was this knowledge, more than anything else, which allowed Ginny to Apparate home with Ron and leave Privet Drive, where the Muggles would soon be returning, ignorant of her anger or the abhorrent excuse for human beings they represented, behind.

And anyway, Harry was at the Burrow and Ginny wanted to see him more than she wanted to inform the Dursleys of either fact, which was to say she wanted to see him very badly indeed.

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 **Thanks for reading!  
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